Two more employees at the Energy Department’s Hanford Site in Washington state have tested positive for COVID-19 since Friday.
The most recent positive test for the coronavirus was reported Monday on a DOE Hanford website. The notice said the employee was last at their normal Hanford worksite on June 5. The same website posted notice of another COVID-19 infection on Saturday.
Hanford management does not release any information on individuals who test positive, such as whether they are a federal employee or work for one of the site’s contractors. Anecdotal information suggests there have been 25 cases at Hanford since the pandemic began.
About 11,000 employees work at Hanford, the former plutonium production facility that is the Energy Department’s largest and most costly nuclear cleanup site.
Like most other DOE Office of Environmental Management sites, Hanford dramatically reduced its number of employees on-site between late March and late May in an effort to slow the spread of COVID-19.
Hanford remains in Phase 1 of DOE’s framework for returning to pre-pandemic work levels. Phase 1 involves recall of key employees whose work is best performed on-site, but require little in the way of personal protective equipment.
The four-stage DOE program starts with Phase 0, preplanning, and has an ultimate objective of reaching Phase 3, where on-site staffing is nearly equal to pre-pandemic levels. The pace at which sites advance from one phase to the next is based chiefly on infection rates and other regional healthcare data, according to DOE.
As of last Wednesday, prior to the latest reports at Hanford, where were 31 COVID-19 cases across the Environmental Management workforce.
